


nothing left to burn

by zarya



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Missing Scenes, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Slow Burn, Third Semester, fun and flirty breaking and entering, i ruined a perfectly good silent protagonist look at him he's got anxiety, some canon divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24478099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarya/pseuds/zarya
Summary: Ren stares up at the glow-in-the-dark stars he once carefully stuck onto the attic rafters and wonders where exactly he went wrong to reach this point. The only person on Earth who can tell him he’s doing the right thing is Goro Akechi. Surely that’s a bad sign.(The new year ushers in a new reality. Ren copes worse than expected. Akechi handles things as badly as anyone could’ve guessed.)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 62
Kudos: 217





	1. Chapter 1

Leblanc’s attic has a real draft problem. 

Even with the rattling space heater fighting to keep it at bay, the cold creeps through the cracks in the plaster and unpatched holes in the roof like an uninvited guest, shape marked by fluttering dust particles. The exposed beams creak worryingly sometimes, and Ren’s Risette poster has been knocked flying off the wall by a particularly vengeful gust of wind on more than one occasion. 

It reminds Ren of the old derelict buildings back in his hometown, the dilapidated factories turned wind-tunnels in their state of disrepair, echoing and cavernous. Maybe that’s where his whole phantom thief thing started, back when he was a kid messing around in great groaning death traps with friends who haven’t texted him once since he was named _criminal_ by some small-time balding judge.

He doesn’t remember the last time he felt this alone. 

It was Futaba today, bouncing on the balls of her feet, arm looped loosely in her mom’s. The crooked smile on her face was blinding, unforced, not a shy thing to be coaxed from her. If he didn’t know better, he’d think nobody had ever done anything to her that would take it away. 

Asking her to doubt all that, looking her in the eye, begging her to think a little harder - it felt like shooting a dog out back, it felt like - like pushing an old lady into incoming traffic for a youtube prank video. It felt, essentially, like shit.

And Ren doesn’t know, anymore, if he should even be doing this. Everybody’s happy. He could be happy, if he just melted into it, allowed himself to have what he wanted. Even if he can’t be, who is he to take joy from anyone else? How selfish is he to try, to consider it? 

The thoughts wind in endless circles, a snake choking on it’s own tail. Ren stares up at the glow-in-the-dark stars he once carefully stuck onto the attic rafters and wonders where exactly he went wrong to reach this point. The only person on Earth who can tell him he’s doing the right thing is Goro Akechi. Surely that’s a bad sign. 

It’s late. Late enough that if Morgana was a little more himself he’d certainly be ragging on Ren to get to sleep for the big day ahead. Instead, Morgana dozes, curled in on himself on the dusty wooden sofa. That’s one constant at least - his ability to find comfort anywhere seems to have transcended his cat form.

Tomorrow, though? The thought of it makes Ren’s stomach turn. Another day of Sumire trapped with - whatever Maruki is, a betrayal to add to the pile. Another glossy, kira kira filtered version of one of his friends lives for Ren to uselessly plead with. It’s hopeless, it’s always hopeless - a flicker of doubt, a furrowed brow, and then - nothing - a glass wall impossible to shatter. 

He wonders, not for the first time, why his life didn’t get fixed too.

Desperate for a break from his own head, he picks up his phone and regrets it instantly. His notifications are flooded with shiny happy messages from his friends’ fresh new sparkling lives. So, of course Ren does the stupid thing - the thing he’s wanted to do for the past three days, and taps Akechi’s contact photo.

The call almost rings out. Almost.

“I’m busy,” comes the answer, Akechi’s voice abrupt the way a gunshot is. Ren would know. 

It’s still hugely comforting, which - embarrassing.

“With what, unemployment?” Ren asks, flopping his head back onto his cold pillow; he allows that comfort to seep through his skin and into the blood underneath because, well, who’s looking?

“Ha,” Akechi responds, all cardboard. “With investigating your therapist’s entire personal and professional history, if you must know.”

“You know you can just ask me that stuff, right?” Ren says. “That guy is crazy forthcoming for someone with a secret evil plan. Maybe you could learn something from him.”

“Sorry, did I mishear that? You think, from the six months you spent in occasional contact with your school counsellor, that you possess his _entire_ personal and professional history?” 

Ren closes his eyes, fights back a smile before realising he doesn’t have to, nobody can see him. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” he says, lilting. “He told me the important stuff, okay? I don’t see how you hunting down his fetlife profile or whatever is gonna help us when it comes to his palace.”

“I don’t know what that word means and that is not an invitation for you to tell me.” The faint sound of paper sliding over paper lies beneath the still-warm timbre of Akechi’s voice. Ren can picture it so clearly - Akechi in his apartment, which in Ren’s imagination is charmingly small and worn-down and, like, rustic-adjacent, cornered on all sides by stacked manila folders, stranded on the deserted island of his coffee table. “Is there a reason for this call?”

“Yes,” Ren says. “I wanted to call you.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Wait - _wait,”_ Ren tries, and oh god that is audible, palpable desperation. “It’s an emergency. There’s a strange man in my room.”

“It’s Morgana, isn’t it?” Akechi says, exasperation dripping from his every syllable.

“You caught me.”

“He really is even more abhorrent now,” Akechi mutters, like he’s describing a serial killer and not a cat with mild to severe boundary issues.

“Okay, I can say that,” Ren complains, protective in a way only Akechi can inspire. “You can’t.”

“Your man-cat looks like a pervert,” Akechi retorts.

“It’s catboy,” Ren corrects, for some goddamn reason. “And he doesn’t just look like one.”

A faint huff of laughter hastily concealed. Ren wants to chase the sound, get it on tape, loop it a few dozen times. “I have to get back to work,” Akechi says, after a moment, accompanied by the distant sound of more shuffling paper, like he’s trying to prove it.

Panic, again, slipping through. Ren’s shoulders tense at the prospect of that great, yawning alone. “Please,” slips out unbidden, and he doesn’t even have the good grace to feel all that pathetic about it. 

“Ren,” says Akechi.

“Akechi,” says Ren.

“If you’re calling to tell me you can’t handle this--”

“I’m handling it,” Ren says, defensiveness creeping into his tone like the world’s least subtle cat burglar. “It’s handled. I just -- I saw Futaba today.” He doesn’t mean to say it.

“Ah.” Akechi’s voice is watertight. “Her mother?” The rest goes unsaid, too raw a wound for even Akechi to pour salt into. Or maybe he simply can’t be bothered with the fight he’d cause, prince diligence on his little paper island, hungry to get back to playing detective.

“Yeah,” Ren replies, fingers worrying at a loose thread at the edge of his sleeve. “She was happy.”

“They all are. That’s the point.”

“Thanks, detective,” Ren huffs, pushing up from where he lies to sit up against the hard wooden wall, jagged edges like a cosmic punishment for his back, phone trapped between shoulder and jaw. “I know that. They’re my friends. It hurts to try to take that away from them.”

“If we go through with this plan, they’ll lose it either way,” Akechi says, clipped, all business, the CEO of condescension. “We need them on our side, Ren. Don’t fuck this up out of misplaced sentimentality.”

“You used to be so polite,” Ren says. He doesn’t know why, really, it’s not like he misses it; the plasticity of Akechi’s smiles, the unspoken thoughts dancing behind his eyes, all silenced by careful platitudes. Only, this coldness, this cruel sharp skin Akechi has donned like a designer coat - it’s just another mask. Closer to the truth perhaps, but Ren still sort of wants to tear through it with his teeth.

“You used to be quieter,” Akechi says, and Ren can’t help but let out a laugh, breath warm on the cold glass of his phone screen.

“Can I see you?” he breathes, stupidly.

“Joker.” It's a warning, all spikes. Ren can hear a distant shuffle of movement and then - pacing. Of course Akechi paces when nobody can see him. Ren imagines a tight regimented route: television to refrigerator to television again.

“Sorry,” says Ren, pulling at that thread with both hands now, unspooling it. “This is - a lot. I don’t mean to put this on you. There’s literally nobody else.” 

Wrong thing to say - worst thing to say. Ren doesn’t know when exactly he lost control of the four dimensional chess game their conversations used to be. If he had to venture a guess, he’d say it was around the time Akechi shot him in the head.

“How terrible for you,” Akechi says, as cold as Ren deserves.

“That isn’t what I…” Ren sighs, fists a hand into his hair. “I’m glad. I’m so glad you’re alive. If you weren’t here…”

“You’d be lost without me, I know,” Akechi interrupts, still guarded. Then: “I can’t tell what you want from me.” 

“Do I have to want something?”

The silence hangs like a body in the gallows. Ren rushes to cut it loose. “It’s just weird. I know they’re all _real._ But… it feels like I haven’t spoken to a real person since I saw you last.” He thinks it might be charitable to put Akechi in the category of ‘real person’, actually. “I guess I just want it to be the ninth already.”

“The day Maruki is going to try to either brainwash or kill us, you mean?”

Ren smiles, fidgets with his fringe. “You’d be surprised by the lengths I’d go to for another chance to see you in that lycra catsuit.”

“It’s not lycra,” Akechi defends. There’s a pause, the clinking sound of a teaspoon against a mug. Is that - _instant coffee?_ There is truly no end to the treachery. “You better not be having second thoughts.”

“Oh my god,” Ren laughs, startled, and it sounds as natural as it isn't, like _second thoughts? Me? As if!_ “Can you calm down with the suspicion? If I was having doubts, I’d just go behind your back and make a deal with Maruki, like, right now. I have his number.”

“How comforting,” Akechi says, followed by a sip of his - coffee? - could be tea. It’s not tea.

“You don’t get to be mad if I betray you,” Ren chastises, and he’s mostly talking about the murder thing, but it’s a little bit about the coffee too.

“If you betray me, I’ll kill you,” Akechi replies, warmly. “Are we quite done with this little heart-to-heart? I really am busy trying to save the world, you know.” 

“My hero,” Ren says, all fluff. “Uh, thanks, though. For… Well.” The throat-clear of uncomfortable bro moments. It seems ill fitting when directed toward Akechi, a lie you can see from space. “I’ll see you on the ninth?”

“Yes. Don’t bother me until then,” Akechi huffs. “I’m trusting you with this.”

The smile spreads like warm butter. Akechi’s trust is a skittish creature, twitching through the gaps in Ren’s fingers whenever he tries to get his hands around it. Still, it’s nice to hear him say it, the way all of Akechi’s lies are designed. That word again - _comforting._

“‘Course, I got this,” Ren placates. “Don’t stay up too late.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” comes the barbed reply. Ren expects the call to be shut down then and there, but even now, good manners seem to be custom-built into Akechi’s DNA, so it’s followed by a quiet “goodnight Ren,” before the line goes dead.

“Goodnight Akechi,” Ren says, to dead air.

Sleep still doesn’t come easy; he still feels bad - awful actually, about the choices he has to make and the man forcing him to make them. But the loneliness creeps back, just a few steps from all-consuming, and that's close to enough. The rafters creak like trees under buzzsaws, and when Ren closes his eyes to the stars above, he forces himself not to think about how bad tomorrow will be.

He thinks, instead, of Akechi in his apartment, the one Ren’s never seen but has imagined too many times to count, still wide awake, using all that detective instinct to rifle through records he probably stole, eyes caffeine addiction wild, lost to the thrill of the hunt. On the same side as Ren. _For now, for now,_ his brain repeats, in Akechi’s harsh voice.

As thin dayglo light slips away, he doesn’t quite believe it. 

* * *

Of course Ren bothers him before the end date; hits his phone with an unrepentant, “we need to meet up, stuff to discuss,” on the seventh, and Goro’s never been one for letting well enough alone.

This is stupid. Goro knows this is stupid. Obviously, it’s fucking stupid.

Goro Akechi has no misunderstandings about his current design. He knows with astute certainty that he is here (here referring to either Tokyo, planet Earth, or the plane of the living on a moment to moment basis) to fix the mess he’s been dragged into and nothing else. As soon as his task is done, he will return, presumably, to the safety and comfort of total oblivion.

He is most definitely _not_ here to allow Ren Amamiya to get under his skin yet again, or worse allow him to find out--

He gnaws at a hangnail. God his nails have been a mess ever since that damn interrogation room, bitten bloody down to the quick. He’s pretty sure that if he went back to his manicure lady now, she’d kick him onto the street and ban him for life. He’d deserve it, too.

Goro tells himself: if Ren’s having doubts, he needs to be the one to set him right, or else this will all be for nothing. Goro tells himself: the more distant he is, the more likely Ren is to pry, so it’s easier for both of them if he finds some sort of middle ground. Goro tells himself: Ren Amamiya is the most quietly determined person he has ever met, and acquiescing to his will is his only option if he intends to survive him.

He spends ten minutes deciding between two near-identical white shirts.

It’s raining out, the sort of hard frigid rain that comes down in sheets, frothing with bloodthirst for the moment it turns, come morning, to black ice on tarmac. Goro pulls his scarf tight around his throat, holds his umbrella in one gloved clinging grip, and steps out into the downpour.

By the time he reaches the station, his coat - Prada, 77% camel hair, definitely not washing machine safe - is soaked through at the back. He hovers through happy, distant crowds until he spots his target leaning against a white stone pillar - black hoodie hiding frizzy hair, hands plunged deep into pockets, leg jittering with impatience. The only guy in here without a smile on his face the size of planet Jupiter.

He entangles himself within the crowd, just out of view, approaches slowly, refuses to allow the leather of his shoes to squeak on the linoleum; then grabs Ren’s arm and hisses, “Could you _possibly_ look more suspicious?”

Ren starts at the contact and stumbles back, steadied by Goro’s firm grip. He blinks, face bleary for the moment before it sharpens, at which point he looks Goro up and down, face breaking into an amused little smile. “Why are you dressed for, like, a Vague winter photoshoot?” he asks, head cocked to one side. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise we were _robbing a Triple Seven,”_ Goro whispers, heated.

“Close,” says Ren cheerily. “We’re breaking into Maruki’s apartment.”

Goro feels his face go dead-fish slack before he pulls the reel of himself taut. “Don’t you think that’s the sort of thing you should tell me in advance?” he says, leaning conspiratorially closer. “For God’s - I am a celebrity, you’ll recall?”

Ren squints in a disbelieving sort of way. “Yeah, and how many autographs have you signed since this all started?” he asks softly. Goro stays silent, because proudly answering that rhetorical question with _um, three actually,_ might not be the best look. “Turns out when people actually like their lives they don’t spend all their time obsessing over some hot guy they saw on T.V. a couple times.”

Goro purses his lips and suffocates the need to preen at the compliment buried in all that. “Do you have reason to believe he isn’t going to be home?” he asks instead.

Ren shrugs. “I’m pretty sure he’s living in his palace, which - fucked?” he says. “If I’m wrong, well… Two on one, no personas? Might make our job easier, actually.” 

“Fine,” Goro says after a beat, annoyed with himself for being dragged into Ren’s deranged logic. “Living in his palace, really? That _is_ fucked. Do you at least have his address?”

“Uh, I have the building,” Ren says, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand, and oh - Goro is still holding his arm. He lets go, which doesn’t really solve the problem of their faces being close enough that Goro can count Ren’s stupid long eyelashes, smell the coffee on his breath which should be gross but somehow isn’t, and - _Wait._

“You don’t even _have his address?”_ Goro demands, in a tone that sort of gives the impression of being hushed but actually isn’t.

“It never came up in conversation, okay?” Ren retorts. “I don’t know how many school counsellors are out there giving their address out to students just in case they start doing, like, genie necromancy and need someone to shut that shit down.” His eyes are sort of wide, and the serrated edge of glaringly apparent stress cuts right through whatever glib tone he’s going for. Goro faintly wonders which of his friends it was today. “Weren’t you doing a whole creepy profile on him?”

“Yes,” says Goro, less cutting than he means to. “Luckily for you.” He pauses, folds his arms. “Not so ‘crazy forthcoming’ as all that after all, hm?”

Ren rolls his eyes. “Do you memorise everything I say on the off-chance you can somehow use it against me later?” he asks.

“Do you really need to ask that question?” Goro sniffs. He steps back from the pillar and by extension Ren, takes one sharp look around at their surroundings. They could’ve shouted their whole conversation and not one of these people would’ve blinked, he realises. “Come on, no point wasting any more time,” he says, turning to stride toward the ticket gate.

Ren jogs to catch up, and there’s a smile in his voice when he says, “I thought I’d have to work harder to convince you.”

“I’d actually considered doing this as part of my investigation,” Goro says, shrugging. “Never picked a lock before, though, wasn’t sure if it was worth the risk. I did just get out of jail.”

Ren laughs. “And that’s where I come in,” he says, pulling his bag closer, and the act is followed by a soft clink of metal on metal from inside.

For all his frantic energy, Ren is quiet as usual on the train, only his juddering leg betraying his agitation as he sits and scrolls on his phone. Goro clings to the hand rail and stands above him, tries to force his eyes to focus on the window, the passing tunnels, but of course they wander. Ren’s face is drawn like a bow, jaw working, gritted teeth. All of this is bothering him, of course, but he tightens into a coil every time a fellow passenger waxes poetic about the delightful shape their life has suddenly taken.

Is it doubt? He claims that’s not the case, but the sudden reckless, loose-tongued mess of him speaks otherwise. What exactly is he hoping to find at Maruki’s apartment? Some damning evidence, no doubt, ‘I’ve been evil the whole time’ painted in blood on the kitchen wall, anything clear cut enough to erase his uncertainty. Goro already knows they won’t find it, has worked enough cases with guys like Maruki to know exactly what to expect. ‘He seemed so nice’, right up until the point he didn’t. They’d probably all say that about Goro too, if they knew; he’s made sure they would.

And yet, he’s going along with this anyway, isn’t he? It’s so pathetic he could choke on it. 

“We’re here,” he says, when the train announcement doesn’t stir Ren from wherever he’s gone.

Ren blinks away - something, pockets his phone, stands a little shakily. “Thanks,” he says, following Goro onto the platform.

Maruki lives only a few streets away from the station according to Google Maps, but with the rain hitting like shards of glass, and the wind pointedly trying to fling that glass directly into Goro’s eyes, it feels far, far further. Ren’s umbrella turns inside out about halfway there, and when Goro tucks the handle of his own in the crook of his elbow as he hurries forward to help, his umbrella turns inside out too, and they both just sort of stand there and scream about it for a moment.

His coat is fucked. He doesn’t even want to think about his hair.

When they duck through the automatic doors into the lobby of the shabby apartment complex, Ren’s glasses steam up so much they’re practically opaque. He’s out of breath, hair clinging to his forehead, droplets of rain running in thin rivulets down his face and neck, and Goro thinks it might be a good thing he can’t see Ren’s eyes right now because that might be - too much. 

Except, Ren is taking his glasses off to clean them on the sopping wet sleeve of his hoodie, and he glances up through his lashes to look at Goro, and his face splits into a laughing grin at however he must look and, turns out Goro was right, because that _is_ too much, and he is suddenly harbouring a deep need, born entirely of detective’s instinct, to investigate every inch of the small metal mailboxes lined up directly behind Ren’s head.

It’s moments like these where he feels, truly, within the depths of his heart, like the world’s biggest fucking idiot.

“Right,” Goro says, chain-smoker hoarse, and turns out he needn’t have bothered to run his background check on Maruki after all, because it’s right there on the mailbox for Apartment 4C - _Takuto Maruki_ in scratchy doctor print. “Well, that’s convenient.”

Ren laughs, leading the way to the staircase, looks over his shoulder and says, “You look so stupid right now.”

Goro huffs, pushes his wet fringe out of his eyes. “I’ve seen dead bodies dragged up from rivers more put together than you,” he replies curtly.

Ren just smiles and turns away. “Don’t you think it’s kinda weird that they let you look at river corpses in your job as a child cop?”

“Would it shock you to find out the Tokyo Metropolitan Police isn’t actually the most moral organisation out there?” Goro replies, a little breathless as they reach the third flight of stairs. What sort of five-story building doesn’t have an elevator?

“Never would’ve guessed,” Ren replies. 

That cramped room underground; bruises like wine stains, bloody pinpricks in his neck, grey eyes dim and empty under flickering fluorescent light. In the moment, Goro had barely even seen those things, so caught up in his precious victory, in _winning the game._ He’d thought about them after though, alone in his apartment, chewing his nails ‘til they bled.

“This is the one,” Ren says, quite unnecessarily, once they reach the bleached wooden door with a lopsided 4C welded onto it.

Goro glances around the ceiling, well versed in the art of hunting for security cameras. There’s one - or, well, it’s masquerading poorly as one. It looks like it might be half a tennis ball painted black and superglued up there - perhaps a school counsellor position doesn’t pay all that well, after all.

Ren seems to be looking at him for confirmation, so Goro nods. “Hurry up,” he says, voice low. “I’ll keep watch.” Though, honestly, this seems like the kind of place people would catch two teenagers breaking into an apartment and keep walking.

Ren crouches down and gets to work with his homemade lockpick. Goro watches him out of the corner of his eye, the ease with which he handles it, cat burglar fast. Barely two minutes must have passed by the time the metal inside the lock slides free with a soft _click._

Ren hops up, and his grin is wide and cocky as the door swings open. He holds it, gestures for Goro to walk through first. “After you,” he says grandly. Goro squints at him, and Ren rolls his eyes. “Shit before the shovel,” he clarifies.

“Charming,” Goro replies, and strides into the apartment, toeing his muddy loafers off by the front door.

Any distant concern Goro might have had about Maruki still being here is diffused the second the smell of the place hits him. Old takeout containers are piled high on the grimy counter, weeks old, flies buzzing around rotting scraps of food, illuminated by the thin ray of fluorescent light pouring in through from the hallway. Goro forces himself not to gag - he’s seen worse, he reminds himself, reaches for the light switch by touch alone, running his fingers over chipped paint.

Ren, who hasn’t been a regular at crime scenes since he was sixteen, makes a sound like his lungs are being filled with mud. _" Jesus,”_ he exclaims, hand over mouth. 

“What did you expect?” Goro says, folding his arms. “Guy’s been living in his palace for weeks at this point.” That’s one of the first lessons of detective work - do not let the fact that you only just learned a piece of information prevent you from being incredibly patronising about it.

“Couldn’t he have cleaned up after himself before he left?” Ren complains.

“I’m not sure any of this screams rational thought, do you?” Goro asks, raising his forefinger and thumb to his chin. “It certainly seems like he left in a hurry. I wonder what the trigger was - some sudden vision, a divine calling?” He scoffs. “Such bullshit.” 

Ren’s face is still scrunched up like a wad of old tissue paper, so he just nods. The odds of him having paid attention to Goro’s words are a solid ten-to-one. Still, at least there’s some worth to the trip, after all, even if it isn’t what Ren is looking for.

His mind slips back to being fourteen years old, the way it often does, but this time with purpose. Yaldabaoth’s voice hammer-drilling into his head: he was _chosen,_ he was _special,_ he was _just._ The seering fucking righteousness of it all leaking into him as he lay glassy eyed, looking up at the damp-rotted ceiling of a room he shared with five other kids and knowing he was the only one that mattered.

The point being: he’s coming to the conclusion that gods have pretty bad taste.

Ren stumbles past him to take a seat on the yellowing cream couch and says, once he’s ridden the wave of nausea into the sunset, “I don’t think they should let you be a therapist if your house looks like this.” He frowns at the empty snack wrappers and old soda bottles twisted up in each other on the coffee table like they're props set to illustrate his point.

“I think there are more pressing reasons as to why Maruki shouldn’t be a therapist,” says Goro.

Ren snorts. “Yeah,” he says. “I mean, he was kinda bad at his job in the first place.”

“Bad at his job? He thinks the solution to any and all trauma is to ‘cure unhappiness’ like it’s some kind of disease,” says Goro, chin high. “He’s utterly fucking deranged.”

“Sure is working though,” Ren says distantly. He sighs, brushes off his jeans as he stands. “We should get to work. There has to be something.” The determination he wears reeks desperate, but Goro lets it pass, watching him storm into Maruki’s bedroom in his periphery. 

Goro glances around the front room - average if untidy, which makes sense with the way Maruki must have been unravelling, his singleminded commitment to his stupid mission; no time to pick up the ramen cup after you miss the bin the first time when you’re well on your way to becoming God. There’s a couple framed photographs up on the windowsill, of Maruki and his old college buddies, and some red-haired woman whose image flickers the way reality sometimes does recently, some unfocused trick of the light.

Goro picks up the photograph, shifts it around like the holographic foil on an old trading card. She must have something to do with it all, though to what degree he can’t begin to guess. If this is all over a girl… He shakes his head, keeps hold of the frame as he turns to catch up with Ren, who, by the sound of it, is well on his way to ransacking Maruki’s entire bedroom. 

He stands in the doorway and grits his teeth - documents strewn like confetti, whole drawers ripped from the dresser and turned upside down, floor barely visible beneath scattered laundry. It sure seems like someone works quickly. Ren is hunkered down over a dark blue ring binder, teeth cutting into his lip as he flips through pages and pages. 

“Was it like this when you got here?” Goro asks brightly. Ren doesn’t respond, eyes scanning fine black print. Goro takes a step forward, frowns as a piece of paper attaches itself to his sock. He sets the frame he’s holding on the bedside table, picks the letter up, reads over it - a reminder from some credit card scheme that Maruki is behind on his payments. He rolls his eyes. “Maybe this is all some elaborate scheme for Maruki to wish himself out of debt. Don’t know if that’s particularly useful information for _us,_ though.”

Ren finally looks up, and his face is set neutral but his eyes are simmering. “None of this is useful,” he says. “He’s bad with money and he adopted a zebra at the zoo and keeps all the pictures of it they send him, he’s got a pen pal in America but his English sucks so the letters are kinda incomprehensible, he keeps his science textbooks from elementary school for some reason. He’s nice. He’s exactly who I thought he was. So why…” His voice wobbles a little, toeing the ledge, and he breathes in deep, runs one hand through his still damp hair. If he cries Goro is going to heap his fucking lid.

“Ren,” he warns, taking an uncertain seat on the unmade bed. “There’s not going to be an easy answer for this.”

Ren looks away again. “I know that,” he says, dangerously watery. “I just thought - I thought maybe I’d find something here that would make this make sense.”

Goro finds himself scrunching the duvet up under his fist, forces his hand to loosen. “Because you trusted him?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Ren.

“That’s a bad habit of yours,” Goro muses. “You should have it looked at.”

Ren lets out a hollow little laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he retorts. “I trusted _you_ all of five minutes.”

“And yet…” Goro says. He doesn’t even know how to end the sentence, dizzied by the options.

“Yeah,” Ren says, voice steadying by the minute, thank God. “This is different, I think. Like, everything else that happened - it was part of the game, you know? I mean, I wasn’t having _fun._ It sucked, ‘cause I like you and don’t like getting, uh, shot, but also it was… I dunno. Thrilling?” He scrunches his face up as he says it, like he’s embarrassed, which. Yeah, he probably should be. “This, though? It’s just fucking depressing. Everything about it. It just sucks.”

These days, Goro barely has to tap at the dam for the flood to push through when it comes to Ren. He’s like the jackpot witness in the interrogation room, all stumbling syllables, which is laughable when he knows tried and true what Ren’s really like under those specific circumstances, jaw practically wired shut. There’s a part of him that wants to let the dam burst for good, keep needling between the planks until there’s no water left to trickle through, but -- He knows what that feels like, and it isn’t… It isn’t a fair weapon, is all.

“You’re being pathetic,” he says, matter of fact. Ren’s head swivels toward him, all side eye, like _of course you were gonna say that,_ and it stings him to be so predictable. “This is nothing. You’ve killed God --”

“Maruki’s basically a god now,” Ren interjects. 

Goro scoffs. “A shitty excuse for one,” he says. “So your friends are all distracted and happy ‘cause they got everything they ever wanted, so fucking what? You would be too, if he’d bothered to give you the chance. Maybe I would be, if I had any desire he didn’t find morally reprehensible. It doesn’t matter. It’s our job to fix this because we’re the only ones who can. It’s that simple. Stop moping like a child.”

Ren lolls his head back and sighs. “Okay, I get it,” he says. “ Do you have to be so annoying about everything?”

Goro shrugs. “Apparently,” he says, and moves for the door. “Let’s get out of here, this is a waste of time.”

“No,” Ren says quickly, dropping the binder he’s holding and clambering to his feet. “We just need to look harder. There’s gotta be… His laptop. If we find his computer, maybe Futaba can…” He trails off, swears under his breath. Goro’s never seen Ren so cornered, and he’s seen him through the sights of a silenced P230.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “Nothing we find here is going to be any help against his shadow.” He doesn’t know if he believes that, the image of that red haired woman steady in his mind, the oil slick glimmer of unreality dancing around her small smiling face, but Ren shouldn’t be here. That much he knows for certain.

“We need _something,_ anything that could give us an advantage,” Ren protests. “The odds we’re up against… I wouldn’t bet on us, that’s for sure.”

Goro cocks his head. “So you don’t think we can expect any allies?” 

Ren’s face turns to still water. The kind at Lake Ikeda, with the monster lurking underneath. He hikes up a shoulder. “I wouldn’t put all our eggs in that basket,” he says. Goro hadn’t really even considered that scenario. They’re the Phantom Thieves, fingers flexing into a fist - a really big, eight fingered fist or… something. The point is: they’re inseparable and obsessed with each other and Goro had kind of hoped that if anyone was going to rip them apart it’d be him.

“You underestimate us,” Goro says. “Help’s nice, sure, but we’re stronger than any of them. We’ll win this.” 

Ren bites his cheek. “You’d know,” he says. “On account of, you know, the failed attempted murder of it all.” If humour’s a bullseye he’s hitting a double thirteen, but Goro’s lip quirks up all the same.

“Exactly,” he says. “Maruki doesn’t even have the _power of friendship_ on his side.”

“Ugh, you make it sound so corny,” Ren groans.

“Because it is.”

“Still beat you, though,” Ren says, gets close enough to shoulder check him. His eyes are still wildfire but they usually are, he’s just better at hiding it most of the time. “You're probably right, we should get out of here. Brute force hasn’t failed me yet.”

“I'm always right. Besides, I can come back, do some real detective work instead of trashing the place,” Goro says, and Jesus when did he become someone who _placates?_ “You’re too unstable for this, clearly.”

He’s aiming for it to sting a little, the way it did for him back when he was sloppy enough for people to say that kind of thing about him. But all Ren says is “Gee thanks,” in a laughing good-natured way, conceding the point. “If _you’re_ calling me unstable, something must be up.”

“I’m glad we agree,” Goro replies, because he can shrug that off from Ren even if he can’t from anyone else, and makes for the door. A moment passes, longer than feels safe, before Ren follows him.

The fluorescent lights in the lobby flicker slightly, and there’s just kind of a vibe that someone might stab them here, and that someone might be a ghost, but it’s still raining hard outside and there’s nowhere else to hole up, so fuck it, ghost murder it is. Ren sits on the floor, arms wrapped in a stranglehold around his legs. His hair has dried all frizzy, odd matted angles, and that shouldn’t - It shouldn’t.

Goro sighs, leans his head against the cold painted brick wall. Twin black umbrellas lie broken by the door, undisturbed since Ren and Goro flung them down when they ran into the building. The place feels so cavernously empty yet so small, and with the way they haven’t encountered a single other resident of the building it feels like - well, it feels like there’s noone else.

“I’ll call us a cab,” Goro says, into the silence.

Ren twists his neck to look up at him. “You think I’m made of money?” he asks. “Easier to just wait it out.”

“It’s not going to let up,” Goro says. “And I know first-hand how well the Metaverse pays, you cheap fuck.”

Ren smirks. “Alright,” he says. “Maybe I just wanna stay here with you.”

Goro breathes in sharply and clears his throat to cover it, about as effective as pouring finishing plaster into a sinkhole. “You can’t pull off suave when I saw you crying about fifteen minutes ago,” he says.

“I wasn’t crying,” Ren argues. “That was sweat.”

“Sweat, in this weather?” Goro scoffs, slips into the role he’s offered on pure instinct, a tough habit to crack.

Ren grins like a shark, like Goro’s fallen right into his trap. “I can’t explain the effect you have on me,” he says dreamily.

“Jesus,” Goro mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand and pulling the Uber app up on his phone with the other.

He orders the taxi and Ren keeps making his little jokes and it’s - fine. It’s fine, because Ren’s good at pretending, better than Goro ever was, the kind of guy that seems built in a training camp for brushing shit off. Except - Goro might be a sham of a detective, but he’s learned a few things, and when it comes to Ren, well, he’s had practice.

They sit in some guy’s forest green honda with a little mint tray set up in the back to really reach for those five star ratings, and Goro watches Ren watch the rain and thinks, for the hundredth time this week - Maruki’s going to pay for this.

* * *

There’s one day until the deadline, until Ren has to give his definitive answer to Maruki and make peace with what exactly that’s going to be. The sky is clear and white above Inokashira Park and he refuses to look a single goddamn person in their brainwashed smiling face. 

Goro Akechi is not smiling. He is, however, holding two takeout cups of Starbucks coffee, and hands one to Ren by way of greeting.

“Traitor,” Ren says, but he still takes the cup, feels the warmth flood into his hands through his woolen gloves.

“You’re welcome,” Akechi replies nonchalantly, perching onto the bench beside him, several inches away like he’s making room for Jesus. His red scarf is pulled high over his chin and there’s a bulky leather bag slung over his shoulder, and there’s something in the set of his face, the way his eyes slide distantly over the ice-capped lake spread out ahead of them, that makes Ren think he hasn’t slept. That makes two of them.

It was Yusuke today; the last of the bunch. It’s not that he saved him until last on purpose, which would require him putting thought and planning into any of this shit beyond wandering the streets of Tokyo until he stumbled upon one of his friends or got desperate enough to text them, it just - happened that way.

The Sayuri looked unnatural glowing in bright daylight, cordoned off by a red velvet rope and a small metal sign. _It belongs in Leblanc,_ Ren had found himself thinking uselessly, _in its small wooden frame that collects dust like nothing else, dimly lit and hidden and all the more special for it._

Denial had cut into the space between Yusuke’s eyebrows in that old familiar way it did when Ren first met him, and while he knew talking him out of it was the right thing to do the first time around, it still felt kinda bad - this time was worse.

And maybe it should be a point of concern, to get a text notification from Akechi and feel his heart soar with abject relief, but after the week he’s had Ren’s got no inclination to feel particularly bad about it, the same way he doesn’t feel bad about quietly scooting those few inches closer, chasing Akechi’s body heat until their shoulders touch.

“So, what’s the scoop?” Ren asks to fill the silence. “Or - are we doing, like, a spy thing here? What with the clandestine park bench meeting and all. What do spies say?”

“Can you speak more quietly,” Akechi says, between small sips of coffee. “I have a headache.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it."

To Ren’s disappointment, Akechi doesn’t even bother to hit him with some milk-curdling glare, just lets out a breath that turns white in the air and starts digging through his bag, producing a brown manila folder he then drops unceremoniously onto his lap. It’s labelled ‘Dr McFucknuts’ which Ren privately thinks rules but refuses to admit aloud.

“This is everything I’ve compiled that seems to be of any use,” Akechi says. “It’s largely information I acquired through various sources I’ve retained from my time with the police, but I went back to his apartment this morning, and -”

“You said there was nothing there,” Ren interjects, frowning. He’s still more than a little embarrassed about last night, though there’s a hefty part of him that’s too wrung out to care. Ren doesn’t exactly make a habit of breaking his facade, which - hey, at least Akechi can relate to, and maybe that’s it - why it’s so easy around him, to allow the lid to crack and the words to tumble out.

It’s more than that, of course, but it’s nice to find some common ground that isn’t loaded with live mines.

Akechi’s looking at Ren like he’s just eaten something sour. “I was lying, obviously,” he says, bordering on incredulous. “What sort of detective would I be if I left it at that?”

Ren elects not to comment on the sort of detective Akechi is, because he’s a nice person, and because some fruit is just too low hanging. 

“There wasn’t much - a lot of pictures of this woman.” He opens the folder, flips to a page of photocopies of various photographs. The woman in question, cropped red hair, large eyes, is smiling in all of them, yet there’s something - off about them. His eyes can’t quite focus on what he’s seeing. Ren purses his lips, leans over Akechi’s shoulder to get a better look. “She appears to be his ex, from what I could gather. You see it too, right - what’s odd about them?”

“She’s too hot for him,” Ren replies sagely.

“Do you ever tire of - “ Akechi sighs. “The distortion is rather prominent, yes?” His finger taps frantically against the page like he’s struggling to contain his excitement at the opportunity to show off. “Now, I may be making a few logical leaps here, but with the way Maruki currently has the ability to completely change reality but previously could only alter cognition, as we’ve seen with Yoshizawa-san, I’m lead to believe that whatever happened with this woman was prior to the full actualization of his powers. In which case --”

“Oh - Ren!” 

Interruption takes the form of Ann swaddled in a huge knit scarf and grinning through her lip gloss, teetering at around six feet tall in heeled winter boots. Ren is hit with the sharp note of delight that usually accompanies her, before he catches sight of Shiho clinging to her arm and remembers the situation they’re in, his answering smile dying on his lips.

“And Akechi!” Ann continues, cheerfully oblivious. “Look at you two all cuddled up. Shiho, have you met this guy? He’s _so_ funny.”

Shiho’s smile is small and fond, she shakes her head. “I haven’t - you’re that T.V. guy, yeah?” 

Akechi, who is carefully shuffling away from Ren like he’s trying not to wake a sleeping bear, nods absently. “One of many,” he says, in something just to the left of his old fake voice.

This is the point where Ren makes some kind of joke, according to the scripts these sort of conversations usually go off for him. He can’t quite form the words, however, and when he swallows it feels like there’s ash in his throat. He just - he hasn’t - he’s never dealt with _two of them in one day_ before.

Ann notices, because of course she does, leaning forward with a frown and a hand on her hip. “Ren, are you okay?” she asks, in her soft bright voice. “You look a little…” 

He shakes it off, forces his lips to curl into something he hopes resembles a smirk, and manages to choke out, “‘Course,” and not much else. 

Ann’s expression only hardens, something lost and frightened flickering across her gaze like the last time he saw her, which only serves to make him feel more guilty. Akechi is sending him a sidelong glance, looking at him the same way he does when Ren fucks up and injures himself in the metaverse; worry hastily plastered over with twelve discrete layers of disdain.

It’s Shiho who breaks the mounting silence. “Well, it was good to see you guys,” she says. “But we’re heading off to check out the arcade, so --”

She cuts off when Akechi stands, blanching slightly at how he must be looking at her - Ren can only see him in profile from where he’s sitting, but that’s enough to set his teeth on edge. “I can’t take much more of this,” Akechi says bitterly, then turns his gaze to Ann, lifts his chin in an attempt to match her height. “Aren’t you embarrassed? You aren’t as dumb as you seem, Takamaki, you must know this is a delusion.”

Ann’s face falls further, she works her jaw. “I - I don’t know what you --”

“Spare me,” he says, and Ren’s stressed as hell but he can’t help but note that Akechi sounds quite a lot like a nineteenth century Count right now. “After everything this moron -” he pokes a thumb over his shoulder in Ren’s direction. “Has done for you, the least you could do in return is _get a grip.”_

Shiho takes a step forward, shoulders high, and it sure checks that she’s Ann’s dream girl worth bending reality over, because she looks ten seconds away from decking Akechi to the ground. Ren can’t even say he wouldn’t deserve it. She seems to consider it for one long moment, then shakes her head, scowls and grabs Ann’s hand. “Your boyfriend sucks, dude,” she tells Ren, before turning on her heel and dragging Ann away.

Ren stares after them. That could’ve gone better. 

Akechi breathes in roughly through his nose and brushes off the front of his coat, settling back down onto the bench. “Well, let’s see if that works,” he says, perfectly nonchalant. 

Ren swallows the ash in his throat, relaxes shoulders he didn’t realise were hunched. “You better hope that it does,” he says, in a voice steadier than he feels. “‘Cause if you just yelled at Ann for no reason I’m throwing you in the lake.”

“You can try,” says Akechi, primly tucking a lock of hair behind his ear and refusing to meet Ren’s eyes. “I’m concerned about your methods, by the way. It didn’t seem like you’ve gotten through to her at all. Have you even been trying?”

“That’s -” Ren begins, tucking his chin close to his chest. “These things take time.” As far as defenses go that barely counts for paper thin, closer to graphene in the grand scheme of things, but it’s hard for him to think of anything clever when Akechi’s casually throwing his biggest fear in his face like a handful of bitchy sand.

“Hm,” Akechi replies. “No use worrying about it now, I suppose, with the deadline tomorrow. Let’s just make it clear now that if we die it’s your fault.”

“I can live with that,” Ren says.

“I have to assume you won’t be living with much of anything,” Akechi replies, picking the folder back up from the bench beside him. “Now, as I was saying…”

Ren tries to pay attention to Akechi’s droning theory, knows its important, but his brain keeps drifting off to that look in Ann’s eyes, the same one he saw in Yusuke just this morning. One slick shimmer of lucidity, lingering for a moment then quite suddenly gone. 

If he hasn’t reached them, he’s fucked. If he has - he’s stolen this from them. And he knows, he _knows_ Akechi would tell him how stupid he is if he said that out loud, understands on a logical level that this reality is _bad_ and they need to _leave,_ only--

It doesn’t matter how he feels. Ren’s going to do the right thing, just like always. 

* * *

The palace stinks of metal and disinfectant and cold, hard efficiency. Crow is going to kill his way to the core of this place and tear it out. 

The final shadow’s body lands with a hard thunk on the metal tile before it dissipates into ash. Crow’s breathing is ragged, pained; he desperately needs a sit down and an energy drink but he isn’t sure he can will himself to stop. It’s addictive - ripping through shadows with his hands and snarling laughing teeth, Joker alone stalwart and steady by his side, meeting every inch of Crow’s manic rampaging energy with smirking composure until that too breaks, and his eyes glow bright with hunger and his smile cuts his pretty face in two.

It was never like this, before. 

He wonders if this is how it’s been for the Phantom Thieves the whole time. A singular goal, one that is distinctly his own, nobody’s will forcing his hand, no cloying spectre of doubt; only the hard red line of his lightsaber, the dusty remains of his would-be enemies, the sweat clinging to his face under the mask.

And Joker’s eyes on him. That alone could grant him power enough to kill a god. With the way this situation is looking, it might have to.

“We should rest,” Joker says, hands in pockets, not a hair out of place. There’s no trace in him of the boy holding back tears on Maruki’s bedroom carpet; that’s a mess scrubbed clean, and Joker - well, Joker shines.

Crow wants to protest, wants to get down on the floor and throw a tantrum if it means he won’t have to force an end to this frantic, shuddering energy, but one look at the ceaseless resolve in Joker’s grey eyes and he knows it’s not a fight he’d win. In any case, he’d prefer to avoid looking like a petulant child.

“Tired, are you?” Crow asks. 

Joker doesn’t even dignify that with a reaction, just holds the door to the safe room open like a bored maitre d’.

“Well, aren’t you ever the gentleman.” Crow drawls as he pushes past and settles into a stainless steel folding chair, propping his feet up on the table. His back thanks him for making the right decision.

“I am known for it,” Joker replies. He doesn’t take a seat, just lets the door swing shut behind him and tosses Crow a bottle of Arginade before making to rest against the row of coin activated lockers, uselessly adjusting his gloves. 

“Aren’t you going to sit down?” Crow asks, after draining half the bottle.

Joker looks up from his gloves, startled out of thought. “Oh, I guess that bothers you, doesn’t it?” 

“...What?”

Joker shakes his head, stepping forward to pull a seat out from beneath the table and slumping into it, arms folded. “Nothing. Can you get your bell bottoms out of my face, please?” 

Crow pulls his legs back like he’s been tased. “They are not--” He stops, smooths out the creases in his composure. “I didn’t consult with a costume designer for this, you know? I didn’t exactly have _creative control_.”

“Okay, I just thought it was interesting, considering how I look sick as hell and…” He gives Crow a once-over. “Well.”

“I was fourteen!” 

The smirk on Joker’s face evaporates. Ah. Crow had forgotten to expect pity.

“Sorry,” Joker mutters, eyes falling quickly to the floor.

“Don’t.” Crow says, louder than he means. Joker doesn’t startle. His face is blank, steady, like he expected that response, which of course makes it worse.

“Okay,” Joker says softly, after a moment’s passed, clearly eager to drop the thread. “How many more do you think we’ll have to fight?”

Crow shrugs, glad for the distraction. “Security’s irritatingly tight,” he huffs. “But we’re close. He’s going to pull some insipid bullshit, I’m sure, so make sure you’re prepared.” 

“I’m always prepared,” says Joker, popping a stick of pink bubblegum into his mouth. Crow shoots him a questioning look that’s rather eyebrow reliant, the bulk of which is covered by his mask. Joker seems to catch the message all the same. “It’s strawberry,” he explains.

“Good to know,” Crow replies, with more venom than necessary.

Silence falls for a moment after that. Crow tries to check his phone, but the connection to reality is too brittle here for him to get even one bar of signal, which is probably a good thing because all he does on it these days is namesearch himself online - which, well, is what he was doing before, but now the results get more disappointing by the day.

“By the way,” Joker begins. Crow glances up, wary. “I haven’t really had a chance to say but, uh, you’re… Is this what you were holding back? In Sae’s Palace?”

Crow sneers. “I would’ve thought that much was obvious,” he says. “Considering how much of me you’ve already seen.”

Joker blows a huge pink bubble and allows it to pop, and it is exactly as irritatingly charming as he certainly intends it to be. “Just getting used to having it on my side is all,” he says, shrugging.

“If you’re expecting me to button myself up again, then believe me --”

“No,” Joker interrupts, leaning forward, a smile playing on his lips. “I don’t expect you to -- button up? I like it, is what I meant.”

Oh. Well that’s - “I can’t say I particularly care whether you like it or not,” Crow says instead of anything he’s thinking, and the words rush out, abrupt like a brick to the skull.

“Okay,” Joker says. “Just letting you know.”

“Well, now I know,” Crow replies tersely, folding his arms. There’s a million questions he wants to ask, most of which start with, ‘now, when you say you like it, do you mean--’ but willing himself silent is a skill he learned young, so he sits still and lets the tension in the air balloon outward until it squeezes itself into every corner of the cramped little room and starts to hiss.

Joker is of course the one who pops it. He stands up, dusts off his coat, and smiles like a spring breeze. “So are we gonna go beat the shit out of my therapist, or what?” 

* * *

Saying no to Maruki is easier than he thought it would be. 

With Crow by his side, lips twitching with rage, hands seizing like he's itching for a throat to crush, the refusal just falls out, flat and defiant. If taking happiness away from his friends makes him feel bad, makes his gut seize up with guilt, then robbing Crow of his free will when he's only just managed to pin the concept down under grasping, shaking hands - it’s unthinkable.

So Joker says no, and things go from bad to worse.

Cendrillon is, in no uncertain terms, a nightmare. Suspended on air in the auditorium rafters, huge and echoing, swathed in flickering red light, glowing eyes like heat-seeking missiles directed at Joker’s face, glittering with hatred and fear and desperation. 

Sumire was living with this inside of her all this time.

Joker recalls watching Akechi summon Loki in the bowels of that ocean liner. The stabbing pang of, _oh, that’s you._

Cendrillon’s spectral blade comes crashing forward, a sweeping arc of razor sharp speed that Joker barely manages to dodge. Crow lets out a hiss of pain between his teeth as the smooth steel edge cuts into his shoulder, and Joker’s cry for Skadi to ravage the chamber with frost is ripped from his throat on pure frenzied instinct.

“Crow, are you --”

“Don’t get distracted!” Crow snarls, the brittle glow of Loki shuddering around him as he charges forward, the toy sword in his hand looking flimsier than it ever has.

It feels like they’ve been at this for hours. Cendrillon doesn’t flag, doesn’t tire, just eats whatever minions Maruki creates for her and forges on, screaming at them in some horrible echo of Sumire’s trembling voice. It is endless and exhausting. Joker’s legs shake, blood drips into his eyes from a head wound he doesn’t even remember obtaining.

It’s over. They both know it. Even as Crow crumples to the floor, hit by a burst of holy energy, downs an energy drink and forces himself back into standing position, his body wracked by heavy breaths, he must know. 

Crow notices Joker watching him and meets his gaze with wet, red eyes. He must.

Cendrillon reaches her fingers out of reality, returns with a colossal sword glittering blue, ready to strike again, and again, and again. Shadows hiss around her, eager to be devoured. Joker tries to summon King Frost, Thor, Gabriel, Beelzebub… Nothing. He searches the well of himself for Arsene, manages a faint flicker of black glow that crumbles into sparks as soon as it comes.

This isn’t how this was supposed to go. Joker doesn’t lose. Joker winks and flips and dances out of danger, adjusting his collar before he lands on his feet - he doesn’t stand, hands trembling, staring down a blade the size of a beached whale with no plan and no chance of escape, on the precipice of failing everyone he’s ever cared about.

What was it Akechi said - _if we die it’s your fault?_ Well shit. That’s embarrassing.

Except - they probably won’t die after all. Seems more likely Maruki’s planning on stopping Cendrillon in her tracks and swooping in to give the two of them shiny new matching lobotomies. That’s really not much comfort, is it? Not to mention, there’s some twisting part in Joker that feels far more concerned for Crow in that scenario than he does for himself - the same part that’s on its knees begging him to reach out and take Crow’s hand.

His fingers flex. He keeps his grip tight around his dagger but he’s still drawn to Crow’s side, spends the last of his dwindling energy on getting within arm’s reach of him. They work better like that anyway - together, in tandem, the connection between them such a tightly strung wire you could garrote someone with it.

As it stands, neither of them are in any state to be garroting anyone. Crow's giving him this - wide eyed look of blistering expectation, his eyes screaming _do something_ at a decibel level only audible to dogs. Joker gulps in air and stares back, feels the weight of Cendrillon’s blade closing in through the heavy imprints it leaves on the space around them, so immense it feels like it’s about to crack through the metaverse and fall through it.

Things happen pretty quickly after that. 

One moment he’s looking at Crow’s eyes, trying to navigate whatever the hell is going on inside them while a sword is inches away from cracking through his skull, the next he’s thrown to the floor, facing the hard white spotlights up in the rafters. Joker blinks, wonders for a moment if he’s dead, then gathers his bearings enough to hear a rough call of “I don’t think so!” and catch a glimpse of Ryuji Sakamoto, the greatest person Joker has ever met, dazzling, brilliant, actual real life superhero, standing between him and certain death.

Skull weathers the attack that was meant to kill him with a grin on his face and barely a twitch of pain. Joker feels it bears repeating - Ryuji Sakamoto is the greatest human being he has ever known.

Everything falls in line then, a neat row of dominoes. His friends rush in, blazing and bloodthirsty, ready to save him like they have so many times before. And save him they do, a rush of heat and gunfire and taut, shouting voices. Panther is clutching his arm, his face, diarama flooding out from her palms into him. His broken skin knits together, he gulps in air, stands on shaky legs.

“Crow needs help too,” he grits out, tongue thick with the taste of blood.

“Mona's on it,” Panther replies, and her smile is blinding. She pats him once on the cheek before bursting forward into the fray on Queen’s command.

Of course they’d never let him face this alone. Of course they’d fight to the bitter end even at their own expense. Of _course_ they’d come back for him. 

Joker feels -- love, awash with it, delirious with relief, but right underneath there’s something else, something raw and open. He feels absurdly exposed, like his friends just walked in on him having open heart surgery and now they all know the exact shape and size of everything that’s always been inside of him, which is ridiculous because all he and Crow were doing was _looking at each other._

And yet, that’s enough, isn’t it? He tries to shake it off, roll all that newly restored energy into a ball and use it to beat to death anything that gets in his way, but his eyes keep drifting to Crow. Nobody would guess he’d just been crushed down within an inch of his life, the way he cackles and howls and begs the shadows to just fucking try it, Loki’s grinning form lurking over his shoulders, twitching and hungry. He looks beautiful, in a way that knocks Joker a little bit sick.

Once Cendrillon’s minions have been reduced to black ash, Crow looks up and catches Joker staring. He smirks like rotting wood creaking in on itself, cocks his head to one side, _what are you looking at?_ Joker drags his eyes away, runs Queen’s strategy through his head, once, twice, focuses on saving Sumire because _that’s_ what he should’ve been thinking about this whole time.

(Cendrillon falls, eventually, one final shriek. Maruki absconds to who knows where and Sumire lies boneless in Joker’s arms, dead to the world. Crow strides out of the palace ahead of the group, pushing through the obvious limp in his left leg where a still-healing wound split open during the battle. He doesn’t once turn back to check if they’re following. Joker stares at the space between his shoulder blades, his dumb little ruined cape.

“What the _hell_ is that guy’s problem?” Skull mutters, somewhere to the left of him, in a voice close enough to Skull’s approximation of quiet that Joker can assume he probably wasn’t supposed to hear.

Joker smiles at Crow’s back and wonders the same thing.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (wakes up bleary eyed after falling asleep at my station during a backbreaking shift at the shuake factory) where the fuck am i
> 
> thank you 3rd semester for finally pushing me to write about these 2 bitches after they've been living in my head rent free since 2018! also to any slovenly therapists living atop piles of garbage out there: fuck what ren amamiya says i respect YOU
> 
> you can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/lusamines) for more goroposting luv you x


	2. Chapter 2

There’s something warm and familiar about the rooftop of Shujin. The chairs and tables at odd angles, all tinted with frost in the biting January air, the green tarpaulin sheet protecting Haru’s vegetables from the cold, curling at the edges under the assault of the breeze. They never did fix the lock on the door, despite all the threats. 

Ren wraps his arms around his legs, leans his head against the wall and lets out a sigh that emerges as a white cloud before it melts into the wind. He feels like an idiot, really, coming up here without even a coat, and he tucks his face further into his turtleneck as he shivers. 

He’d been woken by the lunch bell, and by the time he’d gathered himself enough to realise where the hell he was, Ryuji had skidded into the classroom, grin lighting up his face, and pointed right at him. Stupid, useless guilt had gnawed at Ren’s gut enough to send him running off like an asshole, leaving Morgana curled up in his desk and Ann calling after him. 

They’re not angry with him at all - if anything, they’re the ones who feel guilty, abandoning him to chase their desires, leaving him alone with only a murderer for an ally, they told him this, again and again on the walk from the Palace to the station. But he can’t stop thinking about Futaba’s tears, how she’d hidden them even from him. For one moment she’d had everything she needed, she’d had her mother, nurturing and alive and whole, and now that was gone, and he’d done that.

And -- why? Because it was the right thing to do? That doesn’t even feel accurate, and God he wishes his brain would just shut up and stop constantly sloshing these thoughts around his head like a well-shaken bottle of champagne, because he’s bored of this, and helping no-one. 

He needs a distraction -- something healthy and good and righteous to focus his energy on, something worthwhile that won’t make him feel like shit. What he wants, on the other hand, is to call Goro Akechi.

He’s halfway about to, numb fingers reaching into his pocket, when the metal roof-access door swings open.

“Jesus, it’s freezing up here!” Ann exclaims, to nobody at all, before she glances down and catches sight of Ren on the hard concrete floor. She smiles and dips down to his level, pulling the zipper of her hoodie up to her throat. “I figured you’d be here,” she says. “Ryuji thought you’d abandoned us to go on a date with Sumire.”

Ren bites his lip against the tug of an answering grin. “Yeah, she really seems to be in the dating mood right now.”

“That’s what I said!” Ann jostles his arm, clearly relieved that he’s not so far gone that he’s lost his propensity to turn to sarcasm’s warm embrace in any moment of need. “That idiot. He doesn’t understand girls at all.” 

A moment of quiet passes between them, during which Ann, to her credit, keeps her complaints about the cold to the bare minimum. Eventually she turns to him, concern creased into the lines under her eyes, and says, “It was nice, you know, having Shiho back to her old self.” 

Ren looks at her, the way her teeth cut into her lip like she’s not sure if she should continue, the hand that drifts up to tangle itself into one of her pigtails like she’s clinging to it for safety, steadying herself. But there must be something in his face, or perhaps she just won an argument in her own head, because she looks suddenly determined, and carries on.

“I’m not going to say something dumb like, it’s actually good that she went through all that hell and it made her a stronger person or something,” she says, softly. “Because it didn’t, you know? You can’t erase what she went through, even now her leg’s better and she laughs more, it’s still there. It’s always gonna be there. So, of course it’d be better if that never happened to her.”

“Ann…” Ren says, hesitantly, unsure of where she’s going with this but feeling pretty fucking terrible regardless.

“Listen, okay? You’re good at that,” she says, her voice pretty, musical, bright. “I think… we’ve been a little unfair to you. I know I was so caught up in how stupid and embarrassed and selfish I felt, that all I wanted was to apologise to you and make you understand that you didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t pay any attention to how you were feeling because all I wanted was to, like, change it. But, I think you’re being unfair to us, too.”

Ren tugs at his fringe, keeps his eyes steady on the floor. “Yeah, probably,” he says.

“No, not -- Not the way you think, Ren.” She sighs, starts toying with the laces on her left shoe. “You were the one who gave us hints that something was off, but we could so easily have ignored you. It was our choice, in the end, all of us. While you were telling Maruki ‘no’ at the Palace we were doing the exact same thing in Leblanc.”

“I mean, you say that, but I don’t think _you_ ended up with much choice in the matter.”

Ann dips her head, conceding the point. “Well, that’s Akechi for you,” she says lightly. Her brow creases after a moment. “I guess? I mean, I knew he was a murderer or whatever, but I’m still kinda shook by his new personality.”

“Yeah, he’s a bitch,” Ren agrees.

“Ugh, celebs,” Ann replies, long-suffering, rolling her eyes. “That thing at the park, though? I’m not even mad about it, honestly. Call me crazy, but I feel like he was… uh. I dunno. Looking out for me?”

Ren feels sort of like a robot hearing an unknown command. He struggles, briefly, to compute how Ann is so deeply capable of seeing the good in everyone around them. People have said, often, that that’s something he’s afflicted with too, yet he can’t imagine being so totally earnest about it.

“What! Come on, he said I’m ‘not as stupid as I look’, I can’t take that as a compliment? Stop looking at me like that! He has to do some stuff without sinister, evil guy motives, right?”

Ren keeps looking at her like that. “I’m pretty sure he just thinks it’s funny to be mean to people,” he says.

Ann shrugs. “You know him better than I do.”

That sobers him a little, because Ren’s pretty sure he knows Akechi better than anyone. Still, that’s always been subject to as much as Akechi allows him to see, or lets slip by mistake, and there’s still so much he can hardly conceive of -- about him and his past, the things he’s done, the things that have been done to him. He thinks about that a lot, actually. All the time.

He does not say any of this -- he’s having a nice moment with Ann and does not want to ruin that by being a massive weirdo. Instead he says, “That’s not hard, though, is it?” and chuckles into his sweater.

Ann just looks at him all soft-faced, worrying her lip like she wants to say something more about Akechi and how much Ren knows about him and that day at the park. She seems to reach the same conclusion as Ren, however -- this is nice, keep it that way. So she stands, brushes off her skirt, and holds her hand out for him to pull himself up.

“C’mon,” she says, “You coming inside or what? I’m not letting you stay up here being all self-hating emo for no reason! Also, I wanna actually eat before class starts.”

Ren ducks his head, smiling as he grabs her hand and stands unsteadily. “I’m assuming the second one is your priority here,” he says. 

“Um, assume whatever you want,” she replies, pigtails bouncing as she heads for the door. 

“That’s a yes,” he mutters, just within ear shot, and she sends him a sidelong glare that stands at odds with the way she’s beaming.

When they get back to the classroom, Ryuji’s lounging in a chair, legs swinging by the edge of Ann’s desk. He sees Ren, nods, and gives him the sort of bro-look that says, ‘bro, we don’t even have to talk about it, okay, dude? I’m just glad to have you back, bro,’ and Ren answers it by launching a can of Chip Star at his head.

He decides, in the moment Ryuji switches from “ow, what the hell man?” to “oh shit, dude, crab? Thanks!” that it’s probably high time he tries to stop worrying about this shit. 

* * *

The Goro Akechi staring out from the laptop screen is trembling slightly, wearing too many layers of foundation and has, at point of recording, only killed three people. Or - none at all, actually, if the state of this reality is to be believed, and that makes him even more repulsive.

Goro scowls at him. The image is so ingrained in his psyche he could see it with his eyes closed, and does often. He’d studied the interview obsessively in the weeks that followed, scanning for cracks, points of weakness that he erased swiftly and did not repeat. Months later, he'd still been hitting the play button, like he was checking his rear mirror, making sure he wasn't followed by the thing he used to be, the thing he's tried so hard to suffocate.

It was his first time on T.V. He's probably been a bit harsh.

This is certainly not the first time he’s turned to Youtube user ‘Akechi’s Precious Smile’ and their meticulously curated playlist of every time he has ever appeared on a screen. Out of the hundreds of clips, there are two in particular he’s watched over and over, with a fervor Goro considers fastidious but others might dub ‘completely fucking obsessive’ -- this, his first ever interview, baby-faced and simpering, and the dismal day he first spoke to Ren Amamiya. 

That second one is absurd to watch now, due to the particular fact that nothing about it is at all different. Goro would know if something had changed. The look in his own eyes, hard and glinting, is that of a killer, no matter what the world around him might claim. He supposes it’s fitting, that Maruki’s reality, much like his ideals, falls apart under half an inch of scrutiny.

Not that anyone’s paying that degree of attention of course.

He sighs, hovers his cursor over the next video in the playlist. He probably should’ve gone to school, after all. His investigation’s at a dead end, and he has a feeling Maruki’s Palace intends on revealing more about the good doctor than Goro’s research ever could, anyway. Sitting listlessly on his couch, wallowing waist deep in self-obsession -- he’s beginning to suspect it might be pathetic.

He’d thought -- if he’s going to die, which he almost certainly is, he doesn’t want his last days spent uselessly studying for college entrance exams he’ll never get to take. That’s a bit fucking depressing. But if this is the alternative, Jesus, just take the shot already Dr. Maruki.

His phone chiming pulls him out of this particular spiral, but unfortunately it’s a text from Ren, which, with regards to avoiding capital S Spirals, does not bode particularly well. Also, his phone brightly declares that it’s gone seven P.M., which is a fun little surprise when Goro hasn’t moved from the couch since lunch.

The text reads as follows: “pt meeting over youre on the team lavenza wants us to meet up tomorrow come over asap so i can give you necessary equipment for your most dangerous mission yet dont ignore this”.

Goro really wants to ignore it. Would it kill Ren to use a single piece of punctuation?

A more pressing question presents itself, however. _Who the fuck is Lavenza?_

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair and shoots back a quick, “Fine.” in a way he hopes accurately expresses his discontent at being called out on short notice for the second time in as many weeks. He would also hope that his perfect grammar (for one word, yes, it still counts) might serve as a hint for Ren to follow suit in that regard, but he knows by now that cause is utterly lost.

One glance in the mirror is enough to inform him that, yes, he does look like a washed up teen celeb who skipped his first day back at school to sit in his apartment and watch youtube videos of himself for six hours straight. Wonderful.

It is not the first time Goro has found himself with a pressing need to improvise. He tugs his hair - not greasy but close enough to the precipice that it bothers him - into a stubby ponytail, hoping Ren won’t comment on it while his self esteem simultaneously relies entirely on him doing so (self awareness is a real bitch, he doesn’t know when it barged its way into his home but he wishes it would leave in a hurry), then takes a moment to smear concealer on his purpling eyebags. 

It’s an improvement? He still looks sort of… recently deceased, which is, at least, accurate. 

Feeling unsatisfied with his appearance is not something Goro is particularly used to, which is perhaps the effect of too many photoshoots, too many starstruck makeup artists (or maybe they were just doing their job, or being nice, _god shut up)_ marvelling at his complexion, the natural thickness of his hair, bone structure they promised him they’d kill for. ‘I have,’ he wanted to reply sometimes, which was fucking demented of him and made no sense anyway. 

And yet, he finds himself struggling to care. Maybe it’s his own irrelevance, the lack of amateur paparazzi loitering outside his apartment complex, the kind he usually called the police on. Or maybe it’s because he’s about to die anyway, some cosmic clock tick-tick-ticking down to zero. He doesn’t know, but hey -- it isn’t raining out, and Goro learned early to be thankful for small mercies.

* * *

The meeting goes well. Shockingly well. Ren had come into it expecting to fight tooth and claw to get the Thieves to even consider letting Akechi join them on this, but he hadn’t even needed to speak before Futaba and Haru talked it out between themselves and gave their quiet, determined consent, downcast eyes and gnawed-on lips.

Anticlimactic, is the word he’s looking for.

With Leblanc empty, dust settling back into comfortable crevices, it feels a little like a dream. He figures that’s natural, right? To be distrustful of a reality that warps its shape every time you blink, that wobbles around the edge of your vision like a 3D movie you don’t have the glasses for. 

What it comes down to is: he trusts his friends more than he distrusts Maruki. And in the same breath, perhaps in a sort of self-aggrandizing way, he feels like he’d know if something wasn’t real. Which -- seriously, really, he doesn’t mean to insult his friends by thinking that he just… Knows what it’s like. To have something too good to be true ripped away from him. 

  
That’s maybe dramatic. He much prefers what he got in return, anyway.

That train of thought is blessedly cut off before it can grow legs and start kicking his teeth out with them, because Akechi slams through the door looking bone-tired and vaguely sweaty in his elegant coat and deep blue scarf, ten minutes ahead of the arbitrary schedule Ren’s invented for the day. The bell above the door tinkles irritably.

Morgana, curled up on the counter, leaps up at the noise and does his very best impression of a scowl when he sees who it is. “Yeesh,” he grumbles, “I forgot this guy was coming.”

Ren smiles fondly, smooths his fingers through the fur at the base of Morgana’s neck and asks, “Do you mind giving us a minute?” 

“Whatever,” Morgana scoffs, hopping down before calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t blame me if he kills you!” as he slinks off toward the attic, mumbling his irritation to an audience of dust mites.

Akechi doesn’t react at all, just looks sort of vacant as he takes his usual seat at the counter and drops his briefcase (why does he still carry that? Is it the one with the gun or the one he keeps his homework in?) at his feet. His usually-stiff posture is in tatters as he half-slumps onto the stool, and his hair is pulled into a hair tie, low on his head in a haphazard way that only looks beautiful on T.V. stars like him and would be a total founding father cosplay moment for pretty much anyone else. It’s taking up nearly all of Ren’s attention.

“So, uh, you want a fedora to go with that ponytail or…?” he says, because he is strong-willed and a Good Leader, turning away to pour Akechi’s usual into a stout white cup. 

Akechi just makes an offended noise, either out of a sense of drama or unintentionally, and nods his thanks when Ren pushes the coffee towards him. His hands hover around the edges of his scarf, like he’s planning on undoing the knot, but something shifts in his expression, and his fingers drift down to warm themselves on the coffee cup instead.

Ren’s tried and true tactic of opening with a joke that’ll piss Akechi off having proven itself an utter failure, he finds himself at a loss for what to say. 

He just -- isn’t sure where he stands with him, now. Now that everyone’s back in the fold and it isn’t just the two of them against the world, bound together by necessity and bad faith. There’s an abyss of things unsaid between them, stretching far beyond the barrier of Leblanc’s counter, and now that the dust has settled and they’re no longer acting out of desperate urgency, Ren feels somewhat drawn to the idea of allowing himself to trip and fall into it headfirst.

Before everything, this thing with Akechi had always felt a little bit like a very dry, basically platonic, extramarital affair (his spouse in this scenario alternating between the Phantom Thieves as a whole, Morgana specifically, or just the concept of having any sort of moral backbone whatsoever). He’d enjoyed it for that -- whatever righteous anger toward authority he might hold, there’s always been a hefty chunk of Ren that simply enjoys doing things he isn’t supposed to. It’s what’s gotten him this far.

Things are different now, of course. Every passing month has brought new, heavier consequences for allowing things to continue on their current trajectory, and this whole time Ren has hunkered down and ignored it, carried on drawing shitty little hearts in the foam of Akechi’s elaborate coffee orders as though he were living in a charming rom-com rather than the high stakes murder not-mystery of reality.

He’d sort of -- deluded himself into thinking he wouldn’t have to choose. For months he’d really believed that he could have his cake and eat it too. Only, Akechi hates cake. Or -- dislikes it. Tolerates it. The end result doesn’t change either way.

“Have you invited me here just to stare at me?” Akechi asks, and Ren swears he hears Morgana make a retching noise upstairs.

Ren snorts. “Sorry, I must’ve been lost in your eyes,” he replies. The retching gets louder.

“Easily done.”

There’s something empty in the way Akechi replies, drone-like in a way Ren’s never seen him. Historically, he’s always been operating at 100%, and whichever direction that is pointed in is usually trouble. Ren can’t for the life of him tell if this is some new protective shell he needs to get used to or if Akechi’s just completely fucking drained. 

He thinks, again, of the way Akechi had looked when they stood on the precipice of death in Maruki’s palace. Eyes red and wide and desperate -- he’d thought, God, he’d thought: is this how he looked back then, the first time round, all alone behind that bulkhead door? He hadn’t wanted to die; he so clearly, deeply hadn’t. 

He didn’t, Ren has to remind himself, either time.

In no hurry to acknowledge any of that, Ren clears his throat, shuffles around the counter to grab the sports bag hanging on the furthest barstool and drops it unceremoniously next to Akechi’s half-empty coffee cup. “Your uniform, lieutenant,” he says, and then thinks, _why did I say that._

Akechi takes another slow sip of his drink before he pulls at the drawstring, and his eyes widen at the sight of what’s inside. “Your P.E. kit,” he states, pushing the bag away like it’s full of worms or something. It’s just a tracksuit, Akechi. “I don’t want this.”

“It’s clean,” Ren says hurriedly, like that’s the issue. “I mean, we’re pretty much the same size, so it’s easier than trying to find you something in the lost and found.” Akechi is still looking at him like he’s stupid, so he tacks on, “You’re gonna need it to get into the school; they don’t actually let random strangers just wander onto campus.”

Akechi’s brow crumples even further. “Why, exactly, are we meeting at your school?”

“Because we -- “ Ren begins, with confidence, before the lack of logic hits him like a steel bolt to the temple. “Lavenza told us to,” he finishes, lamely.

“Do you think I know who the _fuck_ that is?” 

There’s finally some fire behind his words, and it makes Ren laugh, too soft and fond for his own good. “You don’t want me to explain, believe me,” he says, “We’d be here for hours.”

“I don’t particularly appreciate being kept in the dark.” 

“You’ll meet her tomorrow,” Ren placates, “If you’ll lower your standards enough to wear my tracksuit, that is.”

Akechi scowls. “I suppose I’ve made worse compromises,” he says, lifting his cup to drain it of the last few dregs of coffee. Ren wants to know what those were, the other, worse compromises, and knows better than to ask. “Well, if that’s all…” Akechi pushes his stool away from the counter, moving as if to step away toward the door.

“I actually -- “ Ren begins, reaching out to grab Akechi’s wrist and pulling away just a few millimetres short. Akechi’s eyes bounce from the point of near-contact to Ren’s face, alarmed. “I wanted to talk to you about, uh, everything that happened? I mean, we nearly died back there. And Sumire -- “

Akechi takes a few steps back, tugs his scarf closer to his chin. “I really don’t have time for this,” he says icily, “Your friends are back in prime position for you to inflict your problems on, aren’t they? Perhaps you should bother them about this.”

Ren swallows, frowning. The roles seem odd, ill-fitting -- Ren, the one desperate to speak, to let everything out, to reveal more than he should. Akechi, closed off and quiet, speaking in smoke signals if he speaks at all. “I’d prefer to bother you,” he says.

“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Akechi says, pursing his lips. “Because I have places to be.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Ren sort-of-blurts, far more straightforward than their conversations, by any right, should be, but Akechi doesn’t respond, his only reaction visible in the way his fingers automatically raise up to fiddle with the end of his ponytail, like he’s self conscious about it, or forcing his body to do anything but turn to look Ren in the face. 

But Akechi does turn to him, when he reaches the door, just a glance as he pops the collar of his peacoat like an asshole, ostensibly to protect himself from the cold. “Tomorrow, then,” he says. His gaze is unwavering, as usual, but for once it looks almost strained.

For some reason, the voice in Ren’s head takes on the cadence of the maths teacher from his old high school, Mr Yamamoto, and the way he’d address misbehaving kids like he was on some level emotionally destroyed by them throwing bits of wastepaper at each other's heads. He’d always look right at them, stare boring into the depths of their soul, and, doe-eyed and frowning, say softly, “Why are you acting like this, man?” 

Most people didn’t act up in Mr Yamamoto’s class, as this tactic of discipline often made them feel guilty in a way that other teacher’s strategies of shouting themselves hoarse or launching chalk failed to achieve. Meanwhile, it was the only class Ren actively misbehaved in, because he found it extremely funny and weird.

The bell above the door jangles softer this time. Ren finds himself staring at the closed door once Akechi has left, fingers flexing at his side like he wants to uselessly reach out to him, and he jumps out of his fucking skin when Morgana, somehow right next to him, yowls, “Oh my god, he’s so annoying!” 

* * *

(Ren had, on some pathetic level, looked forward to seeing Akechi wearing his track uniform, but when he shows up in it the next day, shoulders high and rigid, hair perfectly styled, it doesn’t look like it ever belonged to Ren in the first place. It looks designer, somehow, practically bespoke compared to how Yusuke and Futaba look, visibly uncomfortable in their borrowed clothes. Like, if Shujin made the ill-informed decision to start their own fashion line, Akechi would be their number one choice to model it, is the conclusion he’s drawing from this if nothing else.

So the tracksuit isn’t the reason he can’t keep his eyes off Akechi during the fevered, strained meeting -- that’s the fault of all the other stuff. The way Akechi slips into some other, colder person-suit when he’s around everyone else, tempers his silicone-carved expression into something cruelly just to the left of neutral, the same way he used to keep it locked in that T.V. ready smile. The way, when he addresses Futaba and Haru, assuring them of his intent not to betray the team, he fails to meet their eyes, keeping his gaze steadily locked on the wall between their two heads.

Still, Ren listens to what Lavenza has to say, the long and short of what Hell awaits them if they fail to take Maruki down. Maruki is God now, it turns out. Whatever, why not? So Ren made the right choice. It’s hard to bask in that revelation when her words echo in his skull like some horrid mantra, “this world and Mementos could fuse once again.” 

He wishes he could burn the Metaverse to ashes, and figures Maruki probably won’t go out of his way to grant that one.

When Ryuji asks Akechi for his input, to be part of the unanimous decision the Phantom Thieves have come to take for granted, Akechi smiles. It’s cocky, a little sardonic, but there’s something else there; something so sad it makes Ren ache.)

* * *

(Afterwards, in the palace, where the air smells of cleaning fluid and machinery and everything is white and chrome, Akechi cleaves a shadow in half before it even has the chance to reveal its true form. Ann hops over, delighted, claps his hand with hers and laughs, tells him “great job!” before she runs ahead to catch up with Makoto. He stares after her for a moment too long, and when Ren catches his eye he looks almost chastened, almost mortified.)

* * *

The laundry room in Goro’s apartment complex is small and dingy and almost certainly has a mouse living in it. For these reasons, he tends to avoid the place as much as possible, which isn’t difficult considering most of his clothing is dry clean only.

After the day he’s had, though? He can’t even be bothered to head back to his room, just sits perched like a gargoyle (Goro is pretty sure he wouldn’t scream if the mouse ran over his shoe but he isn’t certain enough to bet his dignity on it) on the flat white table in the centre of the room, watching the red swirl of tracksuit spin endlessly through fluffy wide suds while his phone notifications light up like Shibuya Crossing.

After the meeting with Lavenza -- Goro’s still quite unsure on who or what she is; she very much did turn into a butterfly at one point but he didn’t want to be the only one commenting on it -- in which they discussed a bunch of stuff he’d already figured out and talked circles around the fact he’d killed the parents of, like, a sizeable percentage of people present, the Phantom Thieves took it upon themselves to add him to their group chat. The real one this time, not the tidy shopfront hiding the second chat they used to shit-talk him at length. He doesn’t understand why.

It’s irritating. He’s always hated being around them, and frankly it’s worse without a well-tailored mask of a personality to duck behind for cover, especially after his outburst in Shido’s palace. It’s one thing to dislike a group of people you’re attempting to ingratiate yourself to before you inevitably betray them, it’s another, much worse thing, to have to work with them on equal terms after you’ve screamed yourself hoarse revealing every horrible part of yourself to them and subsequently died on their behalf. 

To call it embarrassing would be to simplify it, to make it frivolous. Maybe all it is is that he just hates having their sad fucking cow eyes on him, all pity and resentment and, like, holier-than-thou benevolence. Futaba and Haru hate him -- they must, he can’t consider the alternative -- and yet they’re willing to work with him because it’s the rational, logical option? It’s utterly absurd. In their position he’d -- 

Well. He’d probably come up with some ill-conceived revenge plan and ruin his own life, based on track record.

He doesn’t want to think about the goddamn Phantom Thieves, would much prefer to enter into another minor meltdown about his rapidly dwindling Instagram following, but it’s impossible to get them off his mind when his phone literally will not stop buzzing. He picks it up, scowling, and thumbs a little through the backlog.

The conversation has reached heights of asinine he’d never dreamed possible, any and all discussion of plans and tactics put to bed over an hour ago. He stops scrolling when he realises there’s no chance of reaching anything of substance and forces himself to spend a moment absorbing their stupidity.

> **Makoto:** I must admit, I find myself slightly disturbed that you’ve been allowing Ren to sleep during his classes.
> 
> **Ann:** ALLOW… HES 2 MONTHS OLDER THAN ME
> 
> **Ren:** and all the wiser for it
> 
> **Futaba:** makoto’s right ann wtf is your problem ∑(>O<；) you should send the bailiffs in to whack his peepee every time he even looks tired
> 
> **Ryuji:** hows renren sleepign thru every math class yet getting top ofthe exam leaderboard nonstop wtffffffff
> 
> **Ryuji:** if u got cheats u gotta share them with me bro cmon
> 
> **Ren:** sorry to let you down bro but im simply a genius
> 
> **Haru:** Ren is very smart, it must be said! I for one don’t believe he would rely on cheating :) 
> 
> **Ren:** exactly thanks haru
> 
> **Makoto:** All I’m saying is, I think we should all be doing our part to help out our leader after everything he’s done for us.
> 
>   
>  **Makoto:** And that includes preventing his grades from slipping. 
> 
> **Ann:** i got my own grades to worry about 😭
> 
> **Ryuji:** yeah ur own shitty grades LMFAOOOOOOOOO
> 
> **Ann:** you got an f in art class babes i’d keep the comments to yourself maybe x 
> 
> **Yusuke:** Ryuji, if you require any tutoring in art please don’t hesitate to ask me
> 
> **Yusuke:** I’m eager for any opportunity to pass on my knowledge
> 
> **Ryuji:** uhhhhhh HEY FUTABA SAY SMTH ABT ANIME
> 
> **Futaba:** if you want me to do a distraction for you you’re gonna have to be more specific
> 
> **Ryuji:** shit idk tell us ur complex feelings on the monogatari series
> 
> **Futaba:** you dont want to ask me that
> 
> **Futaba:** the time it’d take to unpack… ryuji don’t ask me to do this
> 
> **Ryuji:** ok i take it back
> 
> **Futaba:** too late lets go

Futaba then proceeds to explore her complex feelings toward the Monogatari series. Goro learns several things he wishes he could unlearn. The only positive is that this causes such a lull in conversation that by the time he’s scrolled through it all (of course he didn’t actually have to read a word of it -- a detective’s thirst for knowledge never sleeps), he’s almost caught up with the chat.

> **Ryuji:** i feel like i just got cosmicly punished guys..
> 
> **Ryuji:** yusuke u can tutor me in art that sounds fun actually
> 
> **Yusuke:** Oh, wonderful, I’d be more than happy to do so
> 
> **Makoto:** Futaba, please don’t do that ever again.
> 
> **Futaba:** ryuji asked!???? ( >д<)
> 
> **Haru:** Futaba, I really enjoy it when you talk about your passions :) 
> 
> **Futaba:** aw thanks haru (〃⌒∇⌒)
> 
> **Haru:** But I must admit, I hated that! 
> 
> **Futaba:** sorry
> 
> **Goro:** Alright, I’m muting this chat. Please @ mention me when anything important comes up or in the case of an emergency, otherwise I am making a concentrated effort to free myself of the idiocy you’ve for some reason insisted on subjecting me to.
> 
> **Ren:** oh you are so extremely going to regret that
> 
> **Ryuji: @Goro Akechi** emergency alert ur hair is ugly as shit bro
> 
> **Futaba: @Goro Akechi** emergency!!!!!! you have a bad personality 
> 
> **Ann: @Goro Akechi** EMERGENCY your sweatervest collection is potentially flammable???
> 
> **Ren: @Goro Akechi** this is an emergency youre the most beautiful man ive ever seen
> 
> **Futaba:** ren ( ◉ ͟ʖ ◉ )
> 
> **Ryuji:** ffs ren keep that shit to urself
> 
> **Makoto: @Goro Akechi** I believe there’s a potential emergency. You seem to be in possession of the misunderstanding that you’re the most intelligent person on this team, which is absolutely untrue and, in fact, quite embarrassing for you.
> 
> **Ren:** haha nice one makoto
> 
> **Yusuke:** Oh this seems to be quite the laugh
> 
> **Yusuke:** **@Goro Akechi** Emergency -- you’re diseased
> 
> **Ann:** so true king

This continues for quite some time. Goro briefly wishes he was the sort of person who could look away from the things people have to say about him. After a few minutes (minutes! The Phantom Thieves are certainly not the type of people to let a joke die of natural causes) of this, his phone starts to vibrate, signalling an incoming call, and his gut instinctively seizes at the sound. A sound that, more often than not, used to mean ‘you’re going to have to kill somebody’ or ‘you’re going to have to talk to your father’ or ‘you’re going to have to talk to your father about that guy you just killed’.

It doesn’t mean that anymore, though. The name on the screen is Ren Amamiya in white bold sans serif, set against the backdrop of the contact photo they took together back in August; wide smiles against the leafy green backdrop of Inokashira Park. He picks up without thinking.

“Hey,” says Ren, without even waiting for Goro to answer. “You know they’re only doing this to haze you, right? It means they’re welcoming you to the team.”

Goro ignores that particular instance of wishful thinking, and says, “Am I really the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen?”

It’s a nice distraction, the easy flirtation, the warmth radiating from Ren’s soft, quiet voice, and if there is a tremor in Goro’s hands, some lingering remnant of a life dead and gone and remembered still, it is not so overwhelming that it impacts his hold on his mobile phone.

“Sure,” Ren is saying, with his effortless, distracting charm, “But this is my first time out of the countryside, so I’m going off a pretty small pool, you know?”

“Funny,” Goro replies, “Personally, I’d rank you in the top five.”

“Not number one? You wound me.”

“I’ve worked with a lot of models,” Goro says, apologetically, “Actors too. Unfair advantage, I know.”

“Damn, so even among all those idols? Maybe I should be honoured.” 

“I see I’ve made a grave error. I was, in fact, joking. I meant to say bottom five.”

“You were joking or you misspoke?”

Oh, Goro has missed this. Infuriation takes root, comforting and secure, and the tension in his body relaxes like sand passing through an hourglass. He shouldn’t allow it to. He’s been avoiding this for a purpose but -- But. “I misspoke my joke,” he retorts, and knows Ren will probably make some stupid comment about the fact it rhymed. “The truth of the matter is that you’re absolutely mid-range, right at the centre of the list. Totally bland. Plain, even.”

“Sucks for me I guess,” Ren says, “That rhymed by the way.”

“I know it rhymed.”

“Hey, so, we’re okay right?” Ren asks, suddenly, cutting the lazy growing silence off before it gets too comfortable. 

“Whatever do you mean?” 

“Last time we met up -- at Leblanc, I mean -- you seemed kinda…” Ren trails off. Goro imagines him twisting his fingers around an old-timey telephone cord, chewing his lip all conflicted, even while he knows he’s talking to him on his beaten up smartphone.

“I don’t know how I ‘seemed’ but I can assure you I don’t tend to appreciate being called out on short notice.” 

Ren’s silent for a moment. “Sure,” he says, audibly unconvinced. There’s a breath of quiet that is neither lazy nor comfortable. Ren hurries to disperse it, as he always seems to these days. Goro’s certain it used to be the other way around. “I’m happy you’re on the team, I meant to tell you that.”

“It’s just a matter of convenience, there’s really no need to get sentimental.” 

“Okay, but, like, if I do get sentimental,” Ren begins, in a put-on valley girl voice Goro’s only ever heard him use once before, and takes to mean he’s in a particularly good mood, “What are you gonna do about it?” 

“I don’t think there’s -- “

“Like, are you gonna be mad at me?”

Goro snorts without meaning to and relents himself to Ren’s inevitable smugness about it. But Ren is not so much smug as he is delighted, and a low warm chuckle ripples through Goro’s phone speaker like the purr of an elderly street cat. This is dangerous, he realises.

“We should play chess again soon,” Ren says, once his laughter disperses.

Goro thinks about that, really considers it. Staring at Ren from across a battlefield the size of a small puddle, making placid little remarks, laced with razors, edged with poison, that he was far too cocky to realise were absurdly, insanely obvious in their meaning. Ren would’ve figured him out without them, of course. Goro probably wanted him to. He still isn’t quite sure.

“No, I don’t think we should,” he replies, and it is not so cold as it is matter-of-fact. Reality, checked. 

Ren’s disappointed when he says, “Oh, okay,” and Goro wonders if he’d been stockpiling hope, thinking this one clownish phone call represented some greater breakthrough between them and not a lapse in Goro’s judgement after a long, tiring day.

He hits the end call button without saying goodbye for perhaps the first time in his life. In Maruki’s apartment Ren had come as close to unglued as Goro has ever seen him. That trajectory might continue, or it might stop dead in its tracks and twist inwards, vice-tight and choking. In either case, Goro means to avoid it. 

Ren’s red tracksuit spirals in on itself in maroon streaks against the glass pane of the washing machine; the suds, white flecked with blue, froth and gurgle, bleaching any lingering trace of Goro from the fabric. He might put it through another wash after this, just to make sure.

He spends a long time watching the machine, older than is probably regulation, wriggle against painted brick wall in a way that is slightly concerning, and tries to think of nothing at all. In the end, this strategy works a little too well -- it turns out there _is_ a mouse living in the laundry room, and Goro does indeed scream when it scrambles over his black Gucci loafer like it has someplace to be.

* * *

_It is Christmas Eve and the stars above Shibuya have chosen tonight to revolt against the oppression of light pollution. They’re not doing a very good job, but you have to give them some credit on account of how many of them are probably already dead._

_Ren is looking at the stars so he does not have to look at Sae Nijima’s face, because she is telling him that he has to go to prison, and he feels like he is about to vomit. His jacket is not warm enough to keep him from shivering, even as he says the words he’s supposed to, the ones that drift out of his mouth like flavourless vape smoke, not even raspberry._

_When Goro Akechi enters stage left, Ren thinks he is dreaming. This, perhaps, should have been his first clue._

_“There’s no need for that,” he declares, like he’s been practicing it, too perfectly dramatic for it to be anyone else. And that’s really the worst part._

_He keeps talking, and Ren’s throat is blocked with hot coals; he tries to say what he means, what he’s been dying to say, the words that turn to ash in his mouth five times a day, maybe more. What comes out is, “Akechi?”_

_Akechi turns away from Sae. He looks Ren full in the face and Ren feels like -- like he’s being consumed, like Akechi is drinking him in with his eyes through a neon pink silly straw. It is, as it always has been, a lot._

_“To think I’d get to see you so surprised,” Akechi says, smirking like he’s savouring this, like it’s another little victory for him. “Honestly, it’s pretty satisfying.”_

_Ren keeps staring. The conversation, which is a nightmare, the worst case scenario of this best case scenario, turns to white noise. He feels some pathetic need to scrutinise the features of Akechi’s face, either to confirm he’s real or because this might be the last chance he has. The rise and fall of his chest, his breath turning white in the air, the flush of red on his nose and cheeks and ears. He is alive and he is here, and he is still carrying that stupid fucking briefcase._

_And Ren is going to lose him again._

_“I assume that works for you?” Akechi is saying -- to him, he realises, and Ren feels insane. He feels an enormous urge to push him over -- not in like, a violent way, just. He’s looming. He’s smug and he’s looming and he’s taking visceral delight in the horror Ren’s sure is clear on his own face. Even now, Ren cannot allow him to win._

_He makes himself raise an eyebrow, tilt his head, like someone’s unpaused the game and the King still hasn’t been captured. “You’re turning yourself in?” he asks, and his natural monotone does the work for him with regards to feigned neutrality._

_But there is no sly banter or carefully placed landmines -- unless Akechi’s admission that he’s repaying his debt is a bit he’s doing because_ what? _\-- and Akechi is leaving without so much as a goodbye and Ren is realising he has misjudged things horribly. Sae is smiling, like this is some victory he should be celebrating -- she looks so relieved. Ren’s pretty sure she’s Akechi’s only other friend._

_Then she’s leaving too, catching up with Akechi’s too-fast Terminator walk. Her profile is stern as she speaks to him, though she hooks her arm through his in a way that reads as much like comfort as it is intended as a cage. Ren doesn’t think he can stand to watch them disappear into the crowds, so he doesn’t, and turns his eyes back to mostly-dead stars._

“Are you actually asleep right now?” Crow asks, sounding disgusted.

Joker opens his eyes, wiggles uncomfortably to try and undo the knot in his back. He wasn’t asleep, actually, just thinking; on the precipice of slipping into dream where ideas sometimes flourish and bloom but crumble by morning, leaving you with a handful of dried petals without even the memory of the flower that shed them. If he says this, he will definitely get the shit ripped out of him, so he doesn’t.

The Monabus rocks along the swirling tracks of Mementos, everyone is cramped into the car that is far too big for the ten of them, and Crow is looking at him in a way that is, as usual, too much.

Joker meets his gaze and asks, “Was that really you, on Christmas Eve?” 

Everything is still sleepy and slow and his face is half plastered against the glass, but Joker catches the look that flashes across Crow’s face, just for a moment, and has no clue what it means. “Why wouldn’t that have been me?” he replies, in a careful, measured way. 

Beside him, Panther is craning her head over to look between the two of them, and probably thinks she is being surreptitious about it.

Joker feels the understanding he’d been so certain of start to oxidise on contact with air. “I don’t know,” he says, which is a great start to any sudden revelation. “I was just thinking about it. I don’t think you should turn yourself in.” _You already gave up your life for us once,_ he wants to add, but the car is full of listening ears, and he doesn’t know if he could stand a fight where that’s concerned.

“I think this conversation is perhaps better suited for when all this is over,” Crow replies, looking strained. “Don’t you?” 

Panther, seeing an opportunity to hop in before things get fraught, brightly adds, “I think we’ll be able to come up with a solution that involves, like, none of us going to jail, okay?” He loves her for this, even as it’s kind of a completely useless thing to say.

Queen, muttering so Crow can hear, says, “I’m not quite sure how incarceration isn’t a fair punishment for murder.” 

Noir, besides her, moves closer, and through the gap in the seats Joker can see her squeeze Queen’s free hand. “It’s okay,” she murmurs, as soft as ever.

From the seat closest to the window, Violet is looking between them with eyes the size of dinner plates, and Joker momentarily wonders if she's shocked at the intimacy before he realises that nobody has actually given her the full story. It’s a conversation he owes her, and also sort of completely dreads -- his one ally in Goro Akechi apologism lost to the minute, insignificant detail that he has “killed a bunch of people”. 

Distracted by this, Joker fails to notice the way things are about to quickly unravel until it’s too late. Crow’s spine straightens, his chin rises to a dangerous height, and Joker’s hand is halfway to his arm when he spits, “Maybe you can send me to prison yourself, Nijima. I’ve heard all about your _aspirations.”_

Queen looks flushed and hurt when she turns to Joker over the brim of her seat, eyes ripped from the road. “Did you tell him that?” she asks.

“He’s my friend,” Joker replies. “I can tell him what I like.” 

Queen breathes in sharply, her grip on the steering wheel tightening, and the car goes quiet. It takes Joker a moment to recognise the abrasiveness of his own words, the steel pronged defense in the way he’d said them, and he feels his whole body heat up. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t say things selfishly, haphazardly; he doesn’t turn a room cold by speaking out of turn. 

“Be that as it may,” Queen says, after a moment, in a debate-club-ready tone that is only a little frayed around the edges. “I don’t think it’s quite fair for Joker to be expected to serve time in his place.”

Ryuji, from the back of the car, yells, “Panther just said she’s gonna figure out a way for nobody to go to jail. What, you guys don’t believe in her powers?” 

“Shut up Skull! Maybe we should send _you_ to jail.” 

When Mona speaks in this form, it’s somehow localised entirely from within the car stereo, which is as distressing as it sounds. “I concur!” he yowls, staticky. “Skull should be locked up for crimes against humanity!”

“What crimes, dude?”

“Number one: being stupid. Number two: being ugly. Number three: _selling drugs to children.”_  
  
_“Excuse me!?”_  
  
They continue like this for a while. Joker can’t tell if they’re acting up on purpose to distract from his slip up, or if they really are just like this. Either way, he appreciates them more than words can say. 

It doesn’t change the way Queen folds in on herself, or how Haru, with fragile-boned delicacy, grasps her hand and does not let go. Joker is already brainstorming methods of apology -- a letter, a box of chocolates, Crow’s head on a spike? He’s pretty sure only the last one would scratch the surface. 

Again with pathetic hope, lurking beneath everything, that he might not have to make a choice here. How many times, he wonders, does he have to teach himself this lesson? Once should’ve been more than enough. 

He risks a glance at Crow and finds him looking smugly back, proud little smirk soft under the hard edges of his mask. Joker considers, for a moment, kissing him right here in the Monabus, just to see how much worse he can make things for every aspect of his life. Their masks would probably get in the way, he concludes.

Progress is slow on their first day in this new annex of what is, essentially, the road to Hell. The shadows that lurk here are about equal to the Thieves in strength, but they’re ten strong at this point, which is kind of insane when Joker thinks about it. The closest thing to a serious injury that occurs is the moment when Violet falls to a curse attack, and Joker is at her side with a diarama before anyone can blink. It’s stupid, probably, to be so protective of her when she’s proven herself more than capable. Seeing the worst moment of your polite underclassman’s life projected onto a giant T.V. screen will do that, it seems.

She blinks up at him with her big, owlish eyes, and mutters a, “thanks senpai,” that sounds nothing like Kasumi at all. She must hear it herself, because she blushes and looks away the moment the words leave her lips. Or maybe that’s the other thing. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to deal with that.

By late evening, they still haven’t reached the end of Maruki’s New Mementos, as Joker’s taken to thinking of it, the chrome tunnels stretching on into infinity, and Joker makes the call that they should head back to reality and rest, followed by unanimous, sleepy agreement.

It’s snowing when they reach the end of the escalators and step out into reality. The pavement shines with well-trod slush, and the force of endless foot traffic seems too powerful for the snow to reckon with, so it settles instead for the roof of the station and the branches of dead, empty trees. 

Even in the fluorescent light of Central Street Station, Makoto will not meet his eyes. 

“Night guys!” Ann is calling out, waving as she heads toward her station, and the rest of the group trail after her, leaving only Ren, Futaba, and Morgana shivering under the overhang. And also Akechi. Who is here for some reason. 

“Rivals,” he says, in the same condescending tone he uses when he corrects Ren’s pronunciation, or grammar, or inability to remember the names of the one million philosophers he’s always rambling on about.

Ren blinks at him. “What,” he says. 

“Not friends.” Akechi is smiling in a way that is probably intended as mean, and he pats Ren on the arm as he steps away. “Wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea,” he calls over his shoulder.

“What was that all about?” Morgana, who has somehow winded his way around Ren’s neck without his notice, complains. 

“If he’s blackmailing you, you should tell us now,” Futaba says sagely, but she doesn’t smile the way she usually does when she cracks a joke like that. She doesn’t smile at all.

Ren wonders what it must be like, to have that wound reopened, and have to spend days in the presence of the guy who held the knife. The thought knocks him ill. He feels complicit, like when Akechi was killing Wakaba Isshiki, Ren was at his side, ready with a body bag and a shovel. 

“He can’t blackmail me, I’ve seen his Pinterest boards,” Ren says, after scrambling blindly in the dark for a joke Futaba might like and coming back with that in hand. He feels like an elderly man picking out his grandchild’s birthday present -- _she likes, uh, websites, right? That’s her thing?_

Futaba’s lips curve upward anyway, just a tad, and she nods like she gets it. “Can we go home already?” she asks. “I have a raid planned in like forty minutes.”

Ren smiles down at her, ruffles her hair. “Okay, loser,” he says, and follows her lead toward the ticket gates.

The streets outside Yongen-Jaya Station are piled thick with snow, and more flurries down from the sky in a rush to hit the untouched drifts below. Futaba runs ahead through it, eager to leave the first footprints despite the fact they’ll be buried within minutes, while Morgana huddles further down into Ren’s bag, pulling the zip tight with his teeth to avoid the cold.

A six inch high drift stands between Ren and Leblanc’s front door, and he can already imagine the tongue-lashing he’ll get from Sojiro if he just pulls it open and allows snow to melt into the hardwood floors, so he crouches down and makes a pitiful snow-shovel with his gloved hands, pushing it to either side of the entrance. 

His mind drifts back to Christmas Eve. It was snowing then, actually, and the sky was thick with clouds, so it becomes suddenly absurd to him that his memory of the evening was so fixated on stars that weren’t even visible. What was he staring at, if not them? The revelation that hit him earlier springs to mind, too, and the theory continues to fizzle out like a dusty indoor firework.

If the Goro Akechi who appeared to him that evening was some figment of Maruki actualising Ren’s desires, then he did quite the piss poor job of it. In a vacuum, that idea would be a relief -- his own therapist so blind to the lengths Ren would go for Akechi that he believes his greatest wish is the exact opposite, the comfort and safety of that awful, stupid part of him staying unknown.

In the end, he figures it’s just not possible. The door to Leblanc swings open, and Ren slams it shut against the rushing snow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you ever just not know how to end a chapter so you simply don't.. welcome to my twisted world
> 
> SORRY for taking so long on this kings, my job has been shrinking my brain to the size of a walnut. also i started watching the untamed. it is up to you to decide which one of these is responsible for the clownery of me taking 2 months to write this!!!! anyway i hope it was at all worth the wait, i love Introspection and Conflict (just kidding i hate both of those things and just like to write joaks) 
> 
> as always i am on [twitter](http://twitter.com/lusamines) :)


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